Back Road Adventure
by HalfshellVenus1
Summary: Gen story. Demons, bad food, and the obligatory Latin in a dusty little town.
1. Chapter 1: Settling In

Title: **Back Road Adventure, Chapter 1**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Category: Sam and Dean (Gen, Humor)

Rating: K+

Spoilers: Tiny "Asylum" spoiler

Summary: Sam and Dean versus an unknown grave-robber. (Includes bickering, bad food, and the obligatory Latin).

x-x-x-x-x **Chapter 1: Settling In **x-x-x-x-x

The door to Room 7 is chipped and scarred, and it creaks impressively as Dean pushes it open. Sam takes in the dark walls and hideous curtains, both par for the course. The room's carpet looks as if it might be moving up the evolutionary ladder right in front of their eyes.

"Only one bed," Sam says.

"It was the last room." Dean dumps his bag against the wall. "So, do we remember the rules when there's only one bed?" he asks.

Sam ticks them off. "No kicking, no humping, and watches stay on the nightstand. Dude, I'm the one that got the watch stuck in my hair."

"And that's why we have the rule."

"What about snuggling?" teases Sam.

Dean gives a thumbs up. "But if you clock me during one of your nightmares, I might have to reconsider."

"Dean! It's not like I have them on purpose!" Sam protests.

"I know, but still—I get beaten up enough at work."

Sam's lips quirk at a bizarre mental image of Dean in a suit with a briefcase full of holy water and weapons. What would the business cards look like? "Dean Winchester, serving all your exorcism needs." Or maybe, "Dean Winchester, Purveyor of Permanent Supernatural Solutions."

"You hungry?" Dean asks.

"Yeah." Sam puts his bag on the chair, the toiletries on the dresser. Nothing is going to touch that floor if he can help it.

"Diner next door?" Dean stuffs the 38 down the back of his pants, and checks his wallet.

"Whatever," Sam says. His hunger isn't very specific anymore, and nothing tastes particularly good. Cheap and filling is all he needs right now.

The diner has chicken-fried steak and a waitress named Holly, but both appear lumpy and a little dry. Dean orders a hamburger and a beer, and Sam picks Salisbury steak, which he remembers as being one of the less awful choices from endlessly repeated school-lunch menus in dozens of towns. Sam has had a lot of experience with Salisbury steak. It almost makes him nostalgic.

"So, who're we talking to first?" he asks. His iced tea is weak, but the mashed potatoes aren't bad.

"Ed Stanton," Dean replies. "He's the caretaker at the cemetery, claims he got a look at something running away from one of the open graves." Dean's finished off one ketchup bottle already, and is stealing one from the next table over.

"Was this during daylight, or at night?" Sam asks.

"Night. Says he only saw it just the one time."

"Full moon?" asks Sam.

Dean shakes his head. "Fog."

Sam groans. "Did he, in fact, actually see something? Like, outside of his own head? Was it shadows? A dog?"

Dean holds his hands up. "Dude, don't stroke out on me. We'll find out tomorrow." Sam goes back to staring at his dinner. This Salisbury steak needs a sharp knife, which is just wrong for a hamburger-based meal. He wonders if sawing or stabbing would get the best results.

Neither says anything for awhile, their fatigue beginning to draw a blanket around the table.

Once Dean has finished eating most of what he wants, the usual restless boredom sets in. He drags his fork over his plate in little circles, patterns that only he sees, making them wider and wider and scraping progressively harder until—_screeeee!_

"Dean!" Sam says.

Dean's stomach does a little flip. When did Sammy's voice get so deep? It has that same tone Dad's voice always did when somebody was about to be in trouble.

Dean puts the fork down.

"Are we done here?" Sam asks pointedly.

"Yeah, sure. I'll get the check." Dean is all nonchalance now, ambling over to the cash register while Sam just shakes his head.

They return to the motel, both ready for an early night. They brush their teeth, and then Sam folds their clothes, lays them on the chair, and sits down on the bed. His shoes come off last, stored right where he can get them if he needs to get up during the night. Dean just shakes his head, but then does the same after taking a closer look at the carpet. He puts his watch on the nightstand, and nudges Sam to do the same. Then the lights are off, and the settling in begins.

They usually start off on separate sides of the bed, but find themselves intertwined by morning. Tonight will likely be no different. Dean rolls onto his stomach, knife under the pillow, and Sam can feel the slow relaxation progressing next to him. It is so complete that it's as if Dean has let his bones sink into sand like water. Sam can almost count the minutes, generally no longer than five, until Dean's breathing is slow and shallow and even.

He grimaces in the dark, because it is never that simple for him. Sam concentrates on thinking of a forest where he is sitting under a tree, smelling the dusty and sun-baked pines that surround him. The wind rushes through the tops of the trees, the pine needles raining down around him, and he listens to the soft, random sounds as they gently strike the ground.

After awhile, other sounds join in. Sam hears birdcalls, the trickling of water, and he gets to his feet, following the sounds to their source. The forest is thicker now, changed, the plants lush and damp with small movements rustling in the bushes. Sam glances around for a minute, and suddenly something is around his neck. He looks down and sees the shiny flattened scales of a large snake, pulling tighter and tighter. "Aaah!" he yells out. He comes up out of the dream, struggling against what turns out to be Dean's upper arm lying right across his throat. Sam pushes it down into a more comfortable position on his chest, and takes deep breaths while he rubs the front of his neck. Dean's arm must weigh twenty pounds from the muscles alone. It felt at least that heavy.

Dean snores a little, softly, and Sam tries to calm down again.

Take two. This time, he will start out in a cabin. There is a fire going, and he sits in front of the window with a cup of hot cocoa, watching the snow falling outside. The moonlight illuminates the fields and trees, and the flakes tumble silently, steadily down in hypnotic beauty.

-------- end chapter 1--------


	2. Chapter 2: The Evidence

Title: **Back Road Adventure, Chapter 2**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Category: Sam and Dean (Gen, Humor)

Rating: K+

Spoilers: Tiny "Asylum" spoiler

Summary: Sam and Dean versus an unknown grave-robber. (Includes bickering, bad food, and the obligatory Latin).

x-x-x-x-x **Chapter 2: The Evidence** x-x-x-x-x

Light is streaming in through the threadbare curtains all too early, and it's Dean who wakes up first for a change. If he could just reach his shirt, he'd put it over his face and go back to sleep, but he's tangled up with Sam and it's just too far out of reach over on that chair. He'd pull the pillow over his head, but his knife is under there.

Crap.

And now he's really awake, so he might as well just give up. He eases out from under Sam, sliding over to the side of the bed and nearly stumbling over his shoes before he remembers why he left them there. He slips them on and stands up quietly, feeling a little weird wearing shoes when he just has his boxers on. He grabs a shirt from the chair, and gently drapes it over Sam's eyes to cut off the light. Then he sits near the window, reviewing the newspaper clippings on the body-snatching scare in the local cemetery.

By the time Sam wakes up, Dean has showered and shaved, and is ready to eat. He watches Sam stagger to the bathroom, in the same odd shoes and underwear combo he'd worn earlier himself, but a little water on the face always picks Sam up and soon he's dressed and they're out the door.

The diner's breakfasts are cheaper than dinner, and it's hard to go wrong with pancakes and eggs. The coffee is astoundingly bad, though, and Dean keeps adding sugar to it until Sam's frown makes him stop.

"The newspaper says there've been five grave-robbing incidents in the last month," Dean offers.

"What about before that?" Sam stops eating for a minute as Dean puts a third application of syrup on his stack of pancakes.

"Nothing I could find, at least not on the Net," Dean says. "We can check back-copies of the paper later."

"Library?" Sam asks hopefully.

Dean shakes his head. "If they have one, it's in somebody's house." Sam's disappointed, but really, Dean wonders what he expected. One motel, one restaurant, two churches and a tiny grocery store in this sad-ass town. It's a miracle they caught wind of this case in the first place.

He watches Sam eat, or _not_ eat as the case may be, and tries to tease him into finishing the eggs, or adding some more calories onto the pancakes. He knows Sam's been stressed and unhappy, but his face has gotten angular in the last few weeks and Dean can see the outline of ribs on Sam's back when he's half-dressed. Coaxing without pushing is an art form, and he's used it on Sam all his life. The results have always been varied.

They pack up the remains of Sam's breakfast for later, and drive over to Chapel Hill Cemetery a mile or so out of town. Stanton is waiting at the gatehouse, a skinny, red-nosed guy dressed in a worksuit. There's a nervous vagueness to him, and Sam worries that this whole adventure is a big waste of time. But when Stanton guides them to the closest of the disturbed graves, Sam can see that there's something more "off" here than a stray dog or an overactive imagination.

Whoever or whatever dug up the grave was expedient. Only the dirt in between the ground's surface and the top of the coffin has been removed. Someone tunneled down far enough to hit the wood, broke it open (with an ax, it looks like), and removed the body through the opening.

_What does it want?_ Sam wonders. _And what does it do with the bodies afterwards?_

"Something big," Stanton says, "Like a grown-up man. Had clothes, but couldn't see what type or color. Pants. Maybe a jacket. Pulled the Sorensen's baby outta this one, then ran off before I could get a good look."

"Did it seem like anyone you knew?" asks Sam, but the caretaker just gives him a funny look.

"It's a small town, son. Don't have anyone here who'd do a thing like that."

"No, of course not, I'm sorry," Sam says hastily. This is the hard part about their investigations. They can never bring up the ultra-weird component unless the other person mentions it first. Stanton hasn't bitten yet.

Dean takes over the questioning. "Was there any particular order to the graves being dug up, Mr. Stanton?" he asks. "Certain parts of the cemetery, how long the victims had been buried, anything like that? Same church?"

Stanton thinks that one over for awhile. "Well, the Sorensen's weren't churchgoers at all. And Frank Dibble over on that ridge wasn't much for socializing. And of course, the fellow that was in that spot over there was a vagrant, so we never knew much about him."

"Can you give us the dates when you first realized that something had happened to the graves?" Sam asks. There must be a pattern here, if only he can figure it out.

Stanton writes the information down for them, and they leave him to begin repairing the latest damage as they return back to town.

By noon, Sam is sitting on the hood of the car and researching through his computer archives when Dean returns from the grocery store. The look on Dean's face is so shocked and pained that Sam slides off the car instantly. Dean actually manages not to say anything, and instead packs some ice and dairy perishables into the cooler, lugging it into the motel room.

"What'd you find out?" he calls back, but Sam is right behind him.

"Just covering old ground," Sam says, "We're way out of Internet range here."

"Mrs. Caldwell at the grocery store had a thing or two to say." Dean's moving Sam's leftover breakfast into the cooler, waving it at him first to try to stir up some interest.

Sam just shakes his head. "Did she know any of the victims?" he asks.

"She knew Dan Bingham's family," Dean says. "He was victim number three. Says they've lived here awhile, generally seemed to get along with everyone."

"But the other people were from out of town, or antisocial?" Sam asks.

"Not antisocial, Stanton didn't say that. Just that Dibble didn't get out much, and the Sorensen's didn't go to church. And the other guy wasn't local anyway."

Sam looks thoughtful. "Did Mr. Bingham go to church?" he asks.

"Off and on, she says. United Methodist."

"Wish that meant something to me, but I'm not seeing it yet."

"What'd Dad's journal say?" Dean opens a Coke, swigging it gratefully and coughing as the bubbles rebound right up through his nose.

"I haven't had time to go through it yet. You know Dad's journal. Would it have killed him to break it down into themes, like sections on grave-robbing or on vampires? It's the biggest junkpile of random notes I've ever seen." Sam sits down on the bed carefully. "Plus, my head is killing me."

Dean shrugs. "I'll do it. Why don't you take a nap or something?"

Sam stretches out, head between the pillows both for the darkness and the odd, cavelike comfort it provides. Dean sits on the bed next to him, leafing through the journal's pages and hoping something catches his eye.

An hour or more later he stiffens, then smacks Sam's leg and watches the pillows explode off the bed.

"I found something!" he says.

"You'd better hope so," Sam mutters under his breath. He glares over at Dean and at the page tilted his way.

"This talks about the Krazhnekhoi—"

"Bless you."

"Shut it, dickhead. It's something from the Old World that digs up the bodies of the unbaptized dead and consumes their souls." Dean shows Sam the picture.

"That's gross. Its skin looks half-rotten. Where does it come from, anyway?"

Dean thwaps the book. "The Old World, I just said."

"No, I mean how would it get _here_? How does it start?"

Dean sighs. "Dad doesn't say. But this sounds like a good possibility."

"So now what, are we going to be lurking in the cemetery for awhile, waiting for this thing to show up again?" Sam is tired already at the idea of a night-time stakeout.

"Be my guest, but I'm going to check into the church records of the victims and talk to their families."

This is such a brilliantly better plan that Sam has to punch Dean in the arm for it.

-------- end chapter 2 --------


	3. Chapter : Preparations

Title: **Back Road Adventure, Chapter 3**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Category: Sam and Dean (Gen, Humor)

Rating: K+

Spoilers: Tiny "Asylum" spoiler

Summary: Sam and Dean versus an unknown grave-robber. (Includes bickering, bad food, and the obligatory Latin).

x-x-x-x-x **Chapter 3: Preparations** x-x-x-x-x

Sam is sleeping off his headache in the motel room when he hears Dean's voice approaching out in the parking lot.

"Okay. Will do," Dean says, closing his cell phone as he comes in through the door.

"Dad?" Sam asks hopefully.

"No," Dean says. "Our next assignment, over in Helena. About 200 miles from here."

Sam stretches, and rubs his face. "What is it?"

Dean just gives him an evil, toothy smile and makes an overhand thrusting motion.

"Vamps? Seriously?" Sam shakes his head. "Why do we even bother to turn out for stuff like that? Anybody can make their own wooden stakes."

"Yeah, but the stakes aren't actually the problem, dude. It's all about fear. People let it get the better of them, and pretty soon the vampire hunter becomes vampire dinner."

"We ought to charge a fee for that, at least," Sam says. "It's a nuisance call."

"I don't disagree with you, bro', but that isn't the way we do it."

"Well maybe it's time for a change. This is a dangerous job, and we don't have to do it. We deserve to earn a living at it. Think of Hazard Pay—that totally fits our scenario."

"Who would we bill half the time? The town mayor? _If_ he believes we actually did anything, and _if_ he can get it approved in the budget? "Supernatural Services" isn't the kind of line-item that city councils ignore. I mean, charging money sounds reasonable in theory, but how many reasonable people even believe in what we do?"

Dean has a point, and that is even more annoying than not getting paid.

"All right. Whatever," Sam replies. "What did you find out?"

"I found out," Dean says, "That the victims from this town were not baptized, which fits our profile. And also that the transient guy was the first victim."

"Interesting." Sam drums his fingers on the bed. "So, what if he wasn't a victim after all? What if he's the demon that's taking the other bodies, and he came here to feed? Maybe he moves from town to town, pretending to die and then waiting to be buried so he can find a new food source."

"Seriously?" Dean's eyebrows nearly reach his hair. "Doesn't that seem like a lot of work? Why not just dig people up and go the easy route?"

"Well," Sam says, "Don't you think he might start to get noticed after awhile? I mean really, the great thing about being a dead vagrant is that nobody knows who you are, and they also don't try too hard to find out. And they definitely expect you to stay dead."

Dean sits down on the bed, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth. "But isn't he taking kind of a big chance on getting buried? If someone ever decides to cremate him instead, that's it—he's toast."

God, Dean and his puns. Sam rolls his eyes. "Yeah, but look at _this_ dinky little town! Do they look like they have cremation facilities _anywhere_ nearby? It's got to be less trouble just to bury the guy in the back of the cemetery."

Well that does make sense, Dean has to admit. And a lot of supernatural beings are risk-takers to some degree. Especially those that are essentially undead already. At the worst, if the undead finally get killed then they're no worse off than they would have been the first time.

"OK, I'll buy it," Dean says. "When do you want to go after him? Now?"

"Well, we don't know where he is, where he hangs out when he's not grave-robbing. God, I hope he hasn't left town already, because then we'll really be screwed. How about eat first, stalk later?"

Dean tries not to overreact to Sam's interest in food, and just nods casually. They make a meal out of leftovers and some groceries, and plan while they eat.

"What does Dad's journal say about killing this demon?" Sam says, biting into an apple.

"Nada. We're going to have to take the basics along, and hope for the best."

Sam is about to ask the supply status of rock-salt bullets, but can't bring himself to get onto that particular topic. "Do we have Holy water?"

"I swiped some from the church this afternoon," Dean says, opening a Ding Dong with barely concealed glee.

"Blowtorch? Iron? Bullets?" Sam asks.

"Dude?" Dean says around a mouthful of chocolate, "Been at this awhile, remember? I'm a professional."

Dean does indeed look very impressive with chocolate crumbs falling onto his shirt, Sam thinks, and looks away before he is tempted to say anything.

They finish up, and start lugging stuff out to the car. Demon-killing supplies. Water, snacks and blankets, in case it's a long wait. Their Dad's journal, because there might be a random update somewhere later on that he forgot to link back in. Flashlights.

The car roars to life in the parking lot, and Sam cringes, glaring over at his brother. Dean taps the gas to drop the idling speed, and they move off somewhat more quietly to the cemetery. Dean parks the Impala just down the street there behind a hedge, and they gather up their supplies and sneak over the low stone wall, moving along a line of bushes toward the middle of the cemetery. They pick a central location, backing into the bushes slowly and settling in to wait.

-------- end chapter 3 --------


	4. Chapter 4: Doing Battle

Title: **Back Road Adventure, Chapter 4**

Author: HalfshellVenus

Category: Sam and Dean (Gen, Humor)

Rating: K+

Spoilers: Tiny "Asylum" spoiler

Summary: Sam and Dean versus an unknown grave-robber. (Includes bickering, bad food, and the obligatory Latin).

x-x-x-x-x **Chapter 4: Doing Battle** x-x-x-x-x

It is two hours later, and still no demon. Dean's leg has fallen asleep, and Sam is desperate for a bathroom.

Dean is yanking and poking soundlessly at his leg while Sam sneaks off several bushes down, keeping an eye out for anything that might be moving.

He's just finishing when he hears a loud rustling off to his left, and he moves quickly back to where Dean is holding the shotgun. Sam picks up the metal and the Holy water, and they wait for their visitor to make itself known.

Sam can smell it before he sees it, and fights the urge to hurl back up every part of his dinner. Dean's elbow to the ribs snaps him out of it, and he pulls himself back together, limbs tight and ready for battle.

The demon, as it lurches into sight, is even uglier than the drawing in the journal, or perhaps this particular sample is just in really bad shape. Its flesh is hanging off its face, and it moves stiffly across the grass.

Sam and Dean trade a look, and then Dean blasts it in the chest with the rock-salt bullets while Sam throws the Holy water on it.

The demon looks—confused?—and staggers a little before moving toward them more quickly.

"Sam!" Dean cries, and Sam raises the iron cross and begins intoning in Latin.

"_Vade! Vade! In nomine Patris, et Filli, et Spiritus Sancti_." The demon slows, but has not stopped moving. Dean shoots again, and Sam continues. "_Dominus illuminatio mea!"_

Dean calls out desperately, "_Bozhe moy! Nizhny Novgorod_!"

"Dean, come _on_!" Sam shouts in disbelief. He grabs the blowtorch and fires it up quickly, rushing toward the demon while Dean stands there horrified. _"Cristo! Cristo! Soli Deo Gloria!"_ Sam yells, and the demon is suddenly ablaze. Sam holds his position until the demon crumbles into ash, and then waits until the fire is out. He pours more Holy water on the ashes, and they watch them sizzle and disappear into the grass. Dean pats Sam's shoulder in victory, and suddenly a siren breaks the stillness.

"Crap!" Dean yells, and they rush back to collect their belongings and hightail it down to the car. Dean's barely got the car started back toward town when the local fire engine passes them on the way to the cemetery.

"Man, that was close," Dean says.

"You know, if I ever get arrested for arson in the middle of risking my life to kill some disgusting, scabrous demon, I will be done with this business for good," Sam says. "'Cause on top of everything else, that is just damn _annoying_."

"All for the greater good, bro'," Dean says, eyes twinkling at him in the light from the dashboard.

When they get back to the motel, Sam is suddenly _tired_, barely able to brush his teeth and undress for bed. He falls asleep before Dean is even out of the bathroom, for once safely under without even trying.

But later, once again, Sam finds himself awake during the night, not from a nightmare this time but from being prodded out of sleep by increasingly troubled and thought-laden dreams. Dean is wrapped around him, dead to the world, and Sam is a little envious of how _easy_ it is for Dean to get to sleep and stay there. It doesn't matter what they've been hunting or killing, or what's nearly killed them, or how recent it was. Dean is relatively unaffected by everything.

Sometimes on nights like this Sam's irritation gets the better of him. He finds himself skipping off into the familiar playground of _What Would Wake Dean And What Would Not._

He likes this game, and yes, he does occasionally test out his experiments. His favorite area of deliberation involves how Dean will react to different answers to the question "What're you doing?", which Dean mumbles with regularity every time Sam moves or makes a noise in his sleep.

This game works better when they are in the same bed, when Dean feels safe and unguarded with Sam so close by. Under those circumstances, Dean's triggers for waking up are _much_ more predictable. Sam has classified Dean's potential reactions to Sam's answers into different levels. This is what he has come up with so far.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep" has never gotten any response, and Sam expects this. This answer is completely off Dean's radar. Sam thinks of this non-response as Level 0.

Something like "Hogging your pillow" is Level 1, which Dean almost never wakes up for either. This sort of answer covers responses that are a little weird but probably true, and Dean's subconscious ignores them easily.

Level 2 covers answers that are weird but harmless. "Painting turtles" or "Shredding carrots" fall into this category. There is about a 50-50 chance Dean will wake up for a Level 2 answer.

"Building a rocket" is Level 3. This answer speaks of something that is both weird and dangerous, and it usually gets a "What?" out of Dean and an instant high-alert. Sam only goes to Level 3 when he is feeling kind of evil and resentful, and he never does it when Dean is really tired.

Level 4 would be the real thing—monsters at the door— and Sam has never pulled that one even as a joke. He likes his ribs without the knife, thank you very much.

Still awake, Sam thinks about getting up for a bit. He pulls forward a little, which wakes Dean slightly, and here it comes: "What'reyoudoing?"

Sam thinks quickly. "Admiring your butt," he replies, aiming for somewhere between Level 1 and Level 2. But Dean must be awfully tired tonight because all Sam gets is a vague humming noise from him and then Dean is asleep again already.

Not much fun this time. Sam sighs quietly, and decides to stay put after all. It's going to be a long night, and he's still got the smell of burning garbage on his mind.

By morning, light is coming in through the windows again and Sam awakens to the uncomfortable pressure of Dean's head under his armpit. Dean is pushing up hard and has gotten a really good purchase on the bed.

Sam taps his shoulder a few times, and then leans back and away just in time. "Huh?" Dean says, his head coming up suddenly. He looks dazed, and his eyes wander around the room as he remembers where they are.

"What's going on?" Sam asks.

"Oh," Dean says vaguely. "I dreamed I was stuck in a cave trying to tunnel out through the rock."

All Sam can do is laugh, because really— how else can he respond to that?

He waits as Dean comes awake for a few more minutes, a mistake really because Dean calls dibs on the shower as soon as he's coherent.

Sam is left sprawled on the bed, flipping through the three channels on the room's TV. He watches The Price Is Right through a broken vertical hold for a few minutes, and then switches it off.

His father's journal is on the table, and Sam goes over to it, flipping through it idly. It's funny, but he never really looked at it much as a child. It was fully of ugly pictures and the nightmares that haunted their lives, and Sam had altogether too much of that on a regular basis. But now, he finds the images and footnotes and newspaper clippings intriguing. The journal is a window into his father's mind, into his mission, and it says something that for all of the details and variety of subjects, his father doesn't seem to be building toward any particular conclusion. Actually, that thought isn't reassuring at all, and Sam's wishes he could unthink it almost as soon as it happens.

He adds a few more notes on the Krazhnekhoi, its method of beginning a new feeding area (just for reference, in case others of its kind use other schemes), and lastly, the description of how they killed it.

Dean is out of the shower now. "Ready to hit the road?" he asks, pulling on something that doesn't smell of sweat and smoke and propane.

"Yeah." Sam closes the journal. He'll clean up and get dressed, and then they'll pack everything out to the car for the next Otherwordly encounter.

The days are long and full, and they must have covered half the country by now, just the two of them.

But sometimes, Sam has to wonder. There is so much that they do, protecting and searching and battling random evil, and they are on the move all the time. But is there an overall direction or destination?

Ultimately, do they have any real idea where they're going?

------------- fin -------------


End file.
